What's new for Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg says the future is privacy

SAN FRANCISCO – For more than a decade, Mark Zuckerberg wheedled Facebook users to bare it all. Now he says he wants to give billions their privacy back. At his company's annual conference for software developers Tuesday, he'll give the world the most extensive peek yet into how he plans to do it.

Longtime Facebook observer David Kirkpatrick says Zuckerberg has no choice but to lean into the company's very public challenges.

Last year at f8, as Facebook was coming off a crushing wave of negativity following the Cambridge Analytica scandal that hardened doubts about Zuckerberg's intentions, he told the crowd he had learned from the mistakes that had blown up in his face.

“If f8 is not focused on issues of privacy, security, trust and governance this year, they ought to not even have it. That's the only thing the world wants to hear about from Facebook right now,” says Kirkpatrick, author of “The Facebook Effect” and founder of the Techonomy conference business. “I really think that Mark has gotten the message that if he doesn’t focus on privacy, the world is not going to like him anymore.”

He's offered few specifics and he has cautioned that his vision is still years away from being built. But, Zuckerberg says, he eventually envisions encrypting all of your messages – not just those on WhatsApp – so no one else can read them, automatically deleting messages like Snapchat does after a finite period and dangling a cornucopia of handy features such as video chats, shopping, banking, payments and other services, much like WeChat, China’s “app for everything.” He also says users will be able to securely message one another no matter what Facebook app they are using.

Giving people more ways to communicate privately does not mean Facebook is going to start gathering less data on its users. Facebook's multibillion-dollar advertising model depends on mining vast amounts of personal information to serve up targeted ads.In 2019, Facebook will seize a growing share – 20 percent – of the $333.25 billion worldwide digital ad market, trailing Google, which will have a 31 percent share, according to eMarketer.

But by shifting its focus to individuals and small groups, Facebook is following the puck to where its users have already skated.

Private messaging may be as old as the consumer internet, but it’s still one of the most popular activities. The top four messaging apps reached 4.1 billion users in 2018. And the way Zuckerberg sees it, Facebook’s future will be charted by its homegrown Messenger app and messaging on Instagram, acquired in 2012 for $1 billion, and WhatsApp, acquired in 2014 for $19 billion.

Digital “town squares” such as Facebook and Instagram will continue to be important, Zuckerberg told analysts last week on the company’s first-quarter earnings call. But over time, he's betting on the bigger opportunity being the "digital living room."

Naja Hall, 36, a life coach from the Manhattan borough of New York City, says she prefers one-on-one or small group conversations to blasting everyone on Facebook. “The inbox is where the real relationships happen.”(Photo: Naja Hall)

"It's not hard for Facebook to look at its user base around the world and determine that their competitive advantage is that they have the best peer-to-peer messaging service available and it happens to be encrypted and that's WhatsApp," says Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and author of "Antisocial Media." "It's this gift that dropped into their lap."

As Facebook’s growth has declined, the company has begun stressing the 2.7 billion people who use at least one of its apps – Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp – once a month over the 2.38 billion who log into Facebook each month.

One of those users logging into messaging apps more frequently than Facebook is Joy Doss, 45, a publicist from Memphis, Tennessee. She says she spends more time hanging out with her “IRL” (in real life) friends on messaging services (or “the back channels as she calls them) than on Facebook. That's the place she and her friends talk politics, fashion, news and pop culture and share the latest jokes and memes. Her philosophy: “Everybody doesn’t need to know everything.”

Naja Hall, 36, a life coach from the Manhattan borough of New York City, says she’s not an “over sharer,” and prefers one-on-one or small group conversations to blasting everyone on Facebook. “The inbox is where the real relationships happen,” she says.

That includes her husband. Hall met him on a dating app but their first conversations took place on Messenger. “The way that he wrote, he was very attentive," she said. "It made me feel good. It made me feel special."

“As the song says, “it goes ‘down in the DM,'" Hall added, referring to the hit song "Down in the DM" by rapper Yo Gotti about flirting in direct messages. "Six years later, we are happily married.”